Nation Building in Central Europe

On the Relationship between Religious and National Identity

The purpose of this study is to outline the cooperation between Slovak, Czech, and Polish national movements and the Christian denominations that supported them in various forms, covering the period from the early modern era to the present day. Before describing individual case studies, it is worth making a short detour into the theory of nationalism, since in the European context the reasons for the positive relationship between religiosity and national consciousness are by no means self-evident.

According to the modernist-constructivist concept of the nation, which can currently be considered dominant, the formation of a nation was, at least from the end of the eighteenth century, considered a distinctly secular phenomenon. According to this school of nationalism, nations are understood to be unambiguously the products of the most recent historical era, artificially created by political factors, 1Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Inventing Traditions’, in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds, The Invention of
Tradition (Cambridge, 1983).
economic processes, 2Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain. Crisis and Neo-Nationalism (London, 1981). or even the cultural elite, 3Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, 1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983).
depending on the standpoint of the expert in question. None of them specifically mention the possible role of the churches in the process of nation building, and in fact, based on research which is largely confined to Western Europe and North America, one is generally led to infer the non-religious nature of national movements. The anti-religion, anti-church motive is perhaps most evident in the case of France, as a legacy of the French Revolution of 1789. The ideology of laïcité also originates from the same place, and calls for a strictly secular state system. At the same time, the Anglican Church, which functions as the nominal state religion of England to this day, was not intertwined with the English nation itself during the era in question, but rather with the institutionalized state.

The ethno-symbolist school attributes a much more significant role to religious motives in the formation of nations. In this view, symbols and myths, among many other functions, play a key role in the transformation of pre-modern ethnic communities (ethnies) into modern nations. 4Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986). A paradigm that analyses the roots of national existence over long periods of time (longue durée) can shed light on the important role certain religious groups and denominations played in the development of ethnic communities into national communities across centuries. Consequently, this scholarly perspective very much justifies an examination of the possibility of linking confessional and national movements.

The different approaches outlined above—albeit in a different form and with different terminology—were already appearing in research into nationalism in the first half of the twentieth century. Following Friedrich Meinecke, Hans Kohn lectured on the voluntarist and rationalist nature of nationalism in the West, and the organic, mystical nationalism of the East. The former roughly corresponds to the concept of the Staatsnation, the latter to that of the Kulturnation. These are conceptual opposites which are still in widespread use thanks to their practical applicability. 5László L. Lajtai, ‘Trendek és elméletek a nemzet- és nacionalizmuskutatásban – Vázlatos
kutatástörténeti áttekintés’ (Trends and Theories in Nation and Nationalism Research: A Brief
Historical Overview of Research), Pro Minoritate, 25 (Autumn 2015), 115–147.

Regarding Central Europe, it is widely understood that the developmental model differs from Western Europe in many respects. Csaba Gy. Kiss emphasizes the prevalence of a sense of identity that is significantly different from the aforementioned Western secular conception of the nation and enlightened rationalist ideology when he states that ‘in Central Europe, however, the ecclesiastical intelligentsia played a significant role in the formation of modern national identity, while ideologues relied more on tradition in creating the symbols of the nation. […] In summary, we can say this much: national and religious identity are much more intertwined here than in the West.’ 6Csaba Gy. Kiss, Nyugaton innen – Keleten túl: művelődéstörténeti esszék és tanulmányok (This Side of the
West, beyond the East: Cultural History Essays and Studies) (Miskolc, 2000), 93.
The same line of thought is carried forward by the linguist László Hadrovics, who, in connection with the study of Serbs, Romanians, and Bulgarians following the Eastern Rite, came to the correct conclusion also applicable to Central European peoples following the Western Rite when he remarked, ‘religion and the church were therefore in such an integral relationship with the political aspirations of the nation that it is impossible to interpret the development of the Eastern type of nationalism by means of the concept of Western nationalism’. 7László Hadrovics, Vallás, egyház, nemzettudat: a szerb egyház nemzeti szerepe a török uralom alatt
(Religion, Church, National Consciousness: The National Role of the Serbian Church under Turkish
Rule) (Budapest, 1991), 5.
After familiarizing ourselves with the theoretical background, let us now review the religious aspects of individual Central European national movements.

THE SLOVAK NATIONAL MOVEMENT

In the case of Slovakia, an interesting duality can be observed regarding the identity of the denomination committed to the national cause. While in the early modern period, it was the Catholic Church that began the process of creating the Slovak literary language, by the nineteenth century it was clearly the pastors of the Lutheran Church who had taken over the role of providing an intellectual framework for nationalist sentiment. After the partition of Hungary between the Habsburgs, the Ottomans, and the princes of Transylvania (1541), the Archbishop of Esztergom, and with him the Primate’s Seminary, moved their seat to Nagyszombat (now Trnava) in the highlands of Slovakia. This opened the possibility for the Slovak peasantry to play a more active role in the Catholic ecclesiastical order, as evidenced by the presence of nearly the same number of Slovaks as Hungarians among the seminarians. This is how Anton Bernolák (1762–1813), known to posterity as the creator of the Slovak literary language, first came to Nagyszombat. Bernolák advocated the use of the Slovak language in church literature instead of the Czech language of the Protestant Kralice Bible (1630), arguing that the Slovak nation was independent from that of the Czechs. He made the western Slovak dialect the language of Slovak Catholicism, thereby strengthening Slovakianness in both a religious and a national sense.

However, the tide turned in the nineteenth century. Although slightly less than half of the Slovak population belonged to the Lutheran Church, the Slovaks still constituted the largest ethnic group within Hungarian Lutheranism. Of the 517 Lutheran parishes, 72 per cent were partly or entirely made up of Slovakian-speaking believers. Numerically, this meant 231 entirely Slovak and 143 partially Slovak congregations in 1841. 8József Demmel, Pánszlávok a kastélyban: Justh József és a szlovák nyelvű magyar nemesség elfeledett
története (Pan-Slavs in the Castle: József Justh and the Forgotten History of the Slovak-speaking
Hungarian Nobility) (Budapest, 2014), 110.
The group solidarity and vertical openness so characteristic of Lutheranism made it possible for Lutherans such as the politician Lajos Kossuth, the poet Sándor Petőfi, and General Artúr Görgey, 9Lajos Kossuth (1802–1894): politician, one of the leaders of the 1848 Revolution, governor-president of Hungary during the War of Independence of 1848–1849. Sándor Petőfi (1823–
1849): poet, one of the key figures of the 1848 Revolution. Artúr Görgey (1818–1916): general,
commander-in-chief of the Hungarian Army in 1849.
many of whom also had Slovak ancestry, to play a role in national public life disproportionate to their numbers.

Slovakianism and Lutheranism became particularly intertwined when, in 1840, Count Károly Zay (1797–1871), the national inspector general, proposed the idea of a Protestant union in Hungary—that is, the union of the Lutheran and Calvinist Churches. This idea was not unprecedented at the time, since in 1817, on the 300th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, King Frederick William III of Prussia united the Lutheran and Calvinist Churches of his kingdom by decree. However, whereas in Prussia this measure was intended to facilitate centralization, it is thought that in Hungary, Károly Zay was hoping to enable Protestants to assert their interests more effectively within the Catholic Habsburg Empire.

But this is not how a significant number of Slovakian Lutherans interpreted plans for the union. In 1846, Jozef Miloslav Hurban (1817–1888), a pastor from Luboka (now Hlboké, Slovakia) published his partly theological, partly political pamphlet entitled Union, or the Unification of Lutherans and Calvinists, in which he took an unambiguous stand against unification efforts. In his work, he draws attention to the danger that Slovakian identity might be assimilated into Hungarian culture, and voices his fears that if Lutheranism, which was seen as the ‘Slovak Church’ were to unite with Calvinism,  which was seen as the ‘Hungarian Church’, then ‘the Lutheran Slovaks would die or become Catholics before becoming Calvinist’. 10Demmel, Pánszlávok a kastélyban, footnote 327. An interesting counterpoint can be found in a letter written by Lajos Kossuth to Károly Zay in 1842, which seems to validate Slovak concerns: ‘If our convent does not preserve the honour of our Church before the Hungarian nation and against the Slovaks, I and many others will join the Calvinist faith alongside our brothers, and we will cease to be members of the Church that identifies itself with anti-Hungarian national interests.’ 11D emmel, Pánszlávok a kastélyban, footnote 314. It is interesting to note that while Hurban threatens to convert to the Catholic faith in the event of a union, Kossuth instead pictures conversion to the almost exclusively Hungarian-speaking Calvinist faith in the event of the union’s failure. In any case, these extreme—and perhaps not entirely serious—statements reflect the overwhelming influence of national identity on religious affiliation.

THE CZECH NATIONAL MOVEMENT

As in the case of the Slovak national movement, no single denomination can be named as the sole engine of awakening national self-awareness in Bohemia and Moravia. Although the Hussite tradition came to prominence in the fifteenth century, a number of Catholic monks contributed greatly to the development of the national language and ideology. In the Czech national memory, the Battle of Bílá Hora (White Mountain) in 1620 is considered a turning point, because it was at that point that Bohemia became a Habsburg hereditary province and German replaced Czech as the official language. From then on, the fight against Germanization formed the main driving impetus of the national movement. During the early modern period, one outstanding figure was the Jesuit monk Bohuslav Balbín (1621–1688), who gave voice to Baroque Czech linguistic self-consciousness in his essay Meditations, which remained unpublished during his lifetime. In his writings, Balbín argued that it was impossible to separate the state of the language from the state of the country, hence the need for the extensive use of, and attention to, the Czech language.

The darker side of ethnic differences in the seventeenth century also appears in Balbín’s work. Referring to the German ethnicity of the new immigrants, he appeals to the principal patron saint of the Czechs, St Wenceslas, in typical Baroque, patriotic fashion: ‘You are the shield and mainstay of our nation! If we should perish, we perish for You. In vain shall You wait for the new inhabitants of the land to honour You as this Czech land has for so many long years. Thus, we humbly repeat our entreaty: Guard us and our posterity from destruction!’ 12Jiři Rak, A barokk patriotizmus hányattatásai (The Vicissitudes of Baroque Patriotism), in László
Szarka, ed., Csehország a Habsburg-monarchiában (Bohemia in the Habsburg Monarchy) (Budapest,
1989), 25–47.
At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a judge from Milčice by the name of František Jan Vavák (1741–1818) also hoped that his country would be protected against Germanization efforts by the lance of St Wenceslas, the oar of St Adalbert, the cross of St Prokop, the crown of Charles IV, and the tongue of St John of Nepomuk. Vavák, who drew attention to the best of the Czech Catholic pantheon, also attributed a vital role to Catholicism in the self-identity of the Czech nation.

In addition to the nation-preserving role of the patron saints, the language factor was also given special attention in the early eighteenth century. It is important to highlight this point, since from the nineteenth century on it was common to accuse Catholicism, and in particular the Jesuits, of having played a role in the decline of the Czech language in the era after the Battle of Bílá Hora, which is generally considered a historical watershed. And it is true that in many cases, Counter-Reformation efforts were accompanied by the destruction of non-Catholic publications written in Old Czech. It is no coincidence that on a tour of Bohemia—now a Habsburg hereditary land in which Latin and German were the official languages—a native of Pilsen (now Plzeň, in the Czech Republic) wrote the following in 1703: ‘Our language will not die out because it is spoken most widely among the simple day labourers and farmers in small towns, and especially in the villages, just like in other countries, where the native languages are kept alive by the simple people.’ 13Rak, A barokk patriotizmus hányattatásai, 42–43. With these lines, Antonín Frozín (1671–1720) also established the ideal image of a Czech nation free of estate-based divisions. For him, Bohemia was no longer embodied merely by the nobility—the Czech-speaking peasantry were also members of the nation, and indeed, he saw them as the guardians of national identity.

In the nineteenth century, the non-religious national movement increasingly based on the Hussite tradition began to prevail over Catholicism. Though only a small proportion of the population were Protestant, it was possible to persuade the vast majority of Czech society to sympathize with Hussitism. The monograph written on Jan Hus by František Palacký (1798–1876), the Lutheran historian who spread the ‘Little Czech’ tradition, played a key role in this shift of consciousness. In contrast to universal Catholicism, the ideological system on which Hussite doctrines were based, and which is considered a specifically Czech phenomenon, resonated well among the socially influential Czech petty bourgeoisie. Resentment towards the Catholic Church was as much a part of this particular identity as antipathy towards German speakers. The former ‘Great Czech’ identity, in which the Europeanness of the university’s founder, Emperor Charles IV, and the Catholic tradition were organically intertwined, was replaced by the ‘Little Czech’ mentality, which is more inclined to think on a smaller scale, with a more inward-looking focus. 14Jan Patočka, Mi a cseh? Esszék és tanulmányok (What is Czechness? Essays and Studies) (Bratislava,
1996).

Since the nineteenth century, Czech society has been shaped by the alternating fortunes or even coexistence of Great Czech and Little Czech political forces. However, events since 1989 demonstrate how deep-rooted the negative historical perception of the Catholic Church, seen as loyal to the Habsburgs, had become. While most churches were compensated in 1990, the Czech Catholic Church was unable to recover the majority of its assets, because public opposition was so strong. 15Judit Hamberger, ‘A cseh nemzettudat jellemzői’ (The Characteristics of Czech National
Consciousness), Pro Minoritate, 9 (Winter 1999), 27–32.

THE POLISH NATIONAL MOVEMENT

Early modern Polish history also contains an event just as momentous as that suffered by the Czechs. During the Siege of Jasna Góra (Shining Mountain) in 1655, the Catholic Poles successfully repelled the attack of the significantly more numerous Protestant German and Swedish troops near Częstochowa. The Pauline monastery built on the hill has been a symbol of religious and national independence in the minds of Poles ever since.

However, it may be the Polish case which presents the greatest surprise to the reader. In contrast to the modern stereotype of fervently Catholic, pope-venerating Poles, the Poles of the ‘long nineteenth century’ presented a very different image. The Third Partition of Poland in 1795 can be taken as a starting point. At that time, the Catholic Habsburg, Protestant Prussian, and Orthodox Russian empires completely abolished independent Polish statehood for more than a century by integrating the territory of the country into their respective empires. At this critical juncture, Polish secular society hoped for justice and confirmation in faith from the Papacy, but did not receive it.

In the teleological interpretation of the Papal State, the division of Poland was divine retribution visited upon the Polish people due to the activities of Jacobin and liberal leaders such as Tadeusz Kościuszko. 16Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland (Columbia University Press, 2005), 591. This perspective was strengthened by the establishment of the Holy Alliance in 1815, between the three partitioning monarchies. Pope Leo XIII himself gave his blessing to the operation of this association, though only one of the three rulers was Catholic, since after the turbulent period of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the more conservative half of Europe expected this political constellation to deliver a degree of political consolidation. Accordingly, the popes expected a tri-loyalist attitude from the Poles, in order to ensure the stable operation of the Holy Alliance. However, all of this led to a drastic deterioration in the Papacy’s authority, since it manifestly failed to deliver the hoped-for expressions of justice and solidarity.

Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to think that the Polish Catholic Church itself completely surrendered to the will of the great powers and the Pope. Although there was general indifference to national affairs among the conservative high clergy—partly because the rulers of all three partitioning powers preferred to appoint notoriously unfit persons to episcopacies, or even left them vacant for decades—among the ranks of the ‘radical’ lower clergy, one could also find nationalist clerics. These included Piotr Ściegienny (1801–1890), who also wrote a fictitious letter in the spirit of Christian socialism, entitled The Letter of the Holy Father to Peasants and Craftsmen. In this political treatise, he tried to encourage the lower strata of Polish society to live a modern life, and included some revolutionary overtones. Other defenders of the faith, making Catholicism the sole measure of Polishness, even indulged in the sentiment that ‘there are only as many good Poles as there are good Catholics’. 17Davies, God’s Playground, 598 These and similar statements were by no means as successful before the twentieth century as they later became, since approximately one third of the population of the Polish territories were non-Catholic Jews or non-Polish Ukrainians.

In 1875, however, a Polish National Church was established, albeit in the United States of America. This organization, independent of the Vatican, was later embraced by the Soviet occupiers, who hoped to divide Polish Catholics. However, this plan proved unworkable. In fact, during the years of the Second World War, the Roman Catholic Church regained its old authority in Poland. As a result, the Catholic Church, which is now genuinely difficult to separate from Polish national identity, was able to face communism, freed from the stigma of collaboration and a lack of patriotism. 18Davies, God’s Playground, 599.

THE OUTLOOK TODAY

In May 2017, the Pew Research Center in the United States published the results of a survey conducted between June 2015 and July 2016 on the relationship between religion and national identity in Central and Eastern Europe. 19‘Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe: National and Religious
Identities Converge in a Region Once Dominated by Atheist Regimes’, Pew Research Center (10 May
2017), www.pewforum.org/2017/05/10/religious-belief-and-national-belonging-in-central-and-eastern-europe/, accessed 18 November 2021.
This study, based on representative data collection, clearly indicated that in the post-Soviet region, understood in the broad sense, national and religious factors of personal self-determination are still closely linked. This is especially true for the citizens of states with an Orthodox majority, but within the narrow sense of Central Europe, the role of a particular denomination (Catholicism) in forming ‘true Polishness’ can also be observed in Poland. On average, 57 per cent of those in Catholic-majority Central European countries expressed the belief that their faith plays an important role in their national identity, compared to 30 per cent of Germans and 23 per cent of French citizens. 20‘Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe’, 12.

Slovakia was not examined in the research, but in the case of the other three countries in the ‘Visegrád Four’, a correlation can be observed between the intensity of religiosity and ‘civic pride’, which may be related to national consciousness: Of those who consider themselves somewhat or very religious, 55 per cent of respondents in Hungary, 45 per cent in Poland, and 40 per cent in the Czech Republic said they were ‘very proud’ to be a citizen of their own country. 21‘Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe’, 149. In other words, more religiously active people are also more committed citizens, even in the notoriously irreligious Czech Republic! It is also worth keeping in mind that although Central Europe is below the world average in terms of religious belief, compared to other regions of the world, more people agree with the statement that religious identity is an important part of national identity. This is well exemplified by one of the biggest Hungarian festivals in the Carpathian Basin, the Csíksomlyó Whitsun. Hundreds of thousands of people, not all Catholic or religious Hungarians, typically attend the Mass, which has been held ever since 1567 on the Saturday before Pentecost. Today, for many, this sacred event has become at least as much a question of national character as it is a church holiday. Based on all of this, we can rightly assume that the typological duality of nationalism described in the introduction will continue to be characteristic of Europe in the coming decades.

Translated by Thomas Sneddon

Originally published in Hungarian in Valóság, 65/6 (June 2022), 18–23.

  • 1
    Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Inventing Traditions’, in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds, The Invention of
    Tradition (Cambridge, 1983).
  • 2
    Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain. Crisis and Neo-Nationalism (London, 1981).
  • 3
    Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, 1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities:
    Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983).
  • 4
    Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986).
  • 5
    László L. Lajtai, ‘Trendek és elméletek a nemzet- és nacionalizmuskutatásban – Vázlatos
    kutatástörténeti áttekintés’ (Trends and Theories in Nation and Nationalism Research: A Brief
    Historical Overview of Research), Pro Minoritate, 25 (Autumn 2015), 115–147.
  • 6
    Csaba Gy. Kiss, Nyugaton innen – Keleten túl: művelődéstörténeti esszék és tanulmányok (This Side of the
    West, beyond the East: Cultural History Essays and Studies) (Miskolc, 2000), 93.
  • 7
    László Hadrovics, Vallás, egyház, nemzettudat: a szerb egyház nemzeti szerepe a török uralom alatt
    (Religion, Church, National Consciousness: The National Role of the Serbian Church under Turkish
    Rule) (Budapest, 1991), 5.
  • 8
    József Demmel, Pánszlávok a kastélyban: Justh József és a szlovák nyelvű magyar nemesség elfeledett
    története (Pan-Slavs in the Castle: József Justh and the Forgotten History of the Slovak-speaking
    Hungarian Nobility) (Budapest, 2014), 110.
  • 9
    Lajos Kossuth (1802–1894): politician, one of the leaders of the 1848 Revolution, governor-president of Hungary during the War of Independence of 1848–1849. Sándor Petőfi (1823–
    1849): poet, one of the key figures of the 1848 Revolution. Artúr Görgey (1818–1916): general,
    commander-in-chief of the Hungarian Army in 1849.
  • 10
    Demmel, Pánszlávok a kastélyban, footnote 327.
  • 11
    D emmel, Pánszlávok a kastélyban, footnote 314.
  • 12
    Jiři Rak, A barokk patriotizmus hányattatásai (The Vicissitudes of Baroque Patriotism), in László
    Szarka, ed., Csehország a Habsburg-monarchiában (Bohemia in the Habsburg Monarchy) (Budapest,
    1989), 25–47.
  • 13
    Rak, A barokk patriotizmus hányattatásai, 42–43.
  • 14
    Jan Patočka, Mi a cseh? Esszék és tanulmányok (What is Czechness? Essays and Studies) (Bratislava,
    1996).
  • 15
    Judit Hamberger, ‘A cseh nemzettudat jellemzői’ (The Characteristics of Czech National
    Consciousness), Pro Minoritate, 9 (Winter 1999), 27–32.
  • 16
    Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland (Columbia University Press, 2005), 591.
  • 17
    Davies, God’s Playground, 598
  • 18
    Davies, God’s Playground, 599.
  • 19
    ‘Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe: National and Religious
    Identities Converge in a Region Once Dominated by Atheist Regimes’, Pew Research Center (10 May
    2017), www.pewforum.org/2017/05/10/religious-belief-and-national-belonging-in-central-and-eastern-europe/, accessed 18 November 2021.
  • 20
    ‘Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe’, 12.
  • 21
    ‘Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe’, 149.

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